“Our digital marketing is focused on reaching and connecting with people interested in the Australian property market — whether in the market to buy or sell property, or more generally looking to keep abreast of the latest property trends, market data, and lifestyle content.

“Domain’s editorial coverage of the property market is a key platform from which we reach audiences at scale and drive social engagement.”

From live property auctions to social video series — content plays a pivotal role in Domain’s digital marketing strategy, explaining that it is often one of the first digital touchpoints the company has with its consumers and, is, therefore, an important foundation for audience growth.

“Data is the other key pillar of our digital marketing strategy. We use a wide range of data signals to inform our audience segmentation across our marketing activity.”

As a predominantly digital business with over 6 million Australian users each month, and thousands of property searches each day — data signals are very important to drive personalized and relevant messages to the audience.

Obviously, when a marketer talks about personalization, it raises the question: How much is too much? After all, studies from Gartner and other think tanks have said time and again that marketers often lose customers because they tend to “over-personalize” thanks to the tools they have at their disposals.

However, Bothman emphasizes that personalization is very important to Domain.

“Domain as a brand looks to connect with users throughout every stage of their property journey (which can often be a long one!).

“This means we need to deliver the most relevant content to our users at the right time, to ensure we are adding value at each stage.”

For example, a homeowner or investor who may not be actively looking to sell, but is interested in keeping across the latest market data, could be prompted to visit Domain’s property price forecasts — a useful report updated periodically by the company’s data and research team.

For a prospective first home buyer, Domain publishes articles that advice them about what to expect during the buying process, tips for auction day, and financing options on the company’s own “Domain Loan Finder”.

Once the company’s data suggests that a customer is ready to buy, sell, or rent, personalization becomes even more important and granular, explained Bothman.

“Domain uses a large range of data signals and machine learning to deliver personalized listing recommendations to our users, based on their search criteria.

“These recommendations are surfaced via a range of channels, including social remarketing, onsite content, display and search advertising.

“Identifying these segments and surfacing personalized content is key to maintaining relevance with our audience and growing engagement throughout their property journey.”

Overall, Bothman and her team seem to have struck a fine balance between creating content and using data to personalize it for visitors based on where they are on their renting/buying journey. However, the team is keen to continually innovate and push the boundaries with its marketing efforts.

“Performance marketing plays a big role in driving product preference and conversion across key digital channels.

An example of innovation she cited was the company’s close partnership with Facebook to become the first real estate brand in the Asia Pacific to launch dynamic ads for real estate (DARE), where the social media giant and the real-estate company’s platforms work together to surface new and relevant property listings to users.

“This has driven a step change in app usage and overall mobile engagement for Domain,” said a proud Bothman.

In the future, while Domain’s digital marketing team continues to look for new and exciting opportunities, companies in the real estate and other industries might take a leaf out of Domain’s playbook to push themselves forward in a digital world where eyeballs and attention are hard to catch.